A beneficiary wants a disbursement approved. Know in one business day whether it puts their SSI or Medicaid at risk.
Send the Disbursement Request — the amount, the purpose, and your beneficiary's current benefit status and state. Get back a dated, cited Determination Memo: approve, approve-with-conditions, or do-not-disburse, naming the exact POMS or ABLE QDE provision it rests on and the projected benefit impact in dollars. You never operate a rules engine or track this year's eligibility changes yourself — a Benefits-Compliance Analyst reviews every case, and a licensed elder-law attorney signs off on anything novel or high-risk.
$45 standard (1 business day) / $95 rush (same day) per Disbursement Request — never hourly. Your first request is reviewed free.
Three ways a well-intentioned disbursement quietly costs a beneficiary their benefits
Every special needs trust and ABLE account operates inside a narrow, unforgiving federal rule set. None of these are edge cases — elder-law and settlement-planning practices describe them as routine, good-faith trustee mistakes, not fraud.
What you get back — not a dashboard you have to run
You never log in to classify your own disbursements. Every request ends with a finished, signed-off memo you can act on and keep in your own file.
Determination Memo
A dated, cited verdict — approve, approve-with-conditions, or do-not-disburse — naming the exact POMS or ABLE QDE provision and state Medicaid-supplement rule it rests on.
Benefit-Impact Projection
The specific dollar effect on the beneficiary's SSI or Medicaid, calculated against the current ISM and resource-limit formulas — not a vague risk score.
Restructuring Alternative
Where a request is risky as proposed, a compliant alternative that gets the beneficiary what they need without the benefit consequence — pay the vendor directly instead of the beneficiary, for example.
Certified Opinion
For novel or high-risk cases, a licensed elder-law attorney's signature on the determination — genuine legal work product, not an AI-only answer.
Audit Trail
Every extraction, citation, analyst sign-off, and attorney sign-off retained — evidence of due diligence you can produce if a distribution is ever questioned.
Quarterly Portfolio Review
For retainer accounts, a full-portfolio sweep that catches drift — a beneficiary's benefit status changed, a state rule updated, a pattern that only looks risky in aggregate.
Inside a determination, from request to delivered memo
Submit
Send the disbursement description, amount, and payee; the beneficiary's current SSI/SSDI/Medicaid status and state; and the trust or ABLE document on file — by secure portal or email, no account setup required.
Classify
The Rule Matrix and deterministic Bright-Line Checks run first — the $2,000 resource limit, the ISM presumed-maximum-value formula, ABLE contribution caps — then a first-pass determination is drafted with full citations.
Analyst review — 100% of cases
A Benefits-Compliance Analyst reviews every draft before it goes anywhere near you. Nothing is delivered without a human sign-off.
Attorney sign-off, if triggered
Novel fact patterns, high-dollar requests, low-confidence classifications, and every Certified Opinion route automatically to a licensed elder-law attorney.
Deliver & log
You receive the formatted Determination Memo with full citations; the case is logged to your portfolio and feeds your Quarterly Portfolio Review if you're on retainer.
Flat, per-request pricing. Never hourly.
BenefitGuard is priced per Disbursement Request or as a flat monthly retainer — never by the hour, and never contingent on the beneficiary's own benefits.
Free Disbursement Compliance Check
Send your first Disbursement Request. Get back the same Determination Memo format — minus attorney sign-off — at no cost, with no obligation to continue.
Standard determination
1 business day from a complete request
- Full classification & Bright-Line Checks
- 100% analyst review
- Restructuring Alternative included where relevant
Rush determination
same-day, within 4 hours
- Everything in Standard
- Priority Exception Queue routing if needed
- Same review depth, faster clock
Portfolio Monitoring Retainer
bundles up to 3 standard determinations
- Additional requests at standard per-unit price
- Eligible for Quarterly Portfolio Review
- Month-to-month, 30-day cancel
Proof, as it ships
We don't invent case results or client names. These slots fill in as real determinations are delivered and pilot fiduciaries agree to share them.
Who this is not for
- A family managing a single trust for one relative — too small a decision volume to justify a standing paid desk; a one-time consultation with the drafting attorney is usually the better fit.
- Anyone wanting BenefitGuard to serve as trustee, hold funds, or make the final disbursement decision — the fiduciary remains trustee and decision-maker of record; BenefitGuard supplies the compliance research and, where escalated, the licensed sign-off.
- A request already the subject of an active SSA appeal or litigation — that stays with your own counsel.
- A beneficiary or family member seeking individualized legal advice directly — determinations are delivered to the professional-fiduciary customer of record, not to beneficiaries or families.
The hard questions
Are you our trustee, or do you take custody of trust or ABLE funds?
No. BenefitGuard is never the trustee and never takes custody of trust or ABLE account assets. You remain trustee and decision-maker of record at all times; BenefitGuard supplies the compliance research and, for escalated cases, a licensed attorney's sign-off.
Do you give legal advice to our beneficiary or their family?
No. Every Determination Memo is delivered to the professional-fiduciary customer of record — you — not to a beneficiary or family member. If a beneficiary or family needs their own legal advice, that's a referral to independent counsel, not something BenefitGuard performs.
Is this ever billed hourly?
Never. Standard and rush determinations are flat per-request fees. The Portfolio Monitoring Retainer is a flat monthly fee. The Certified Opinion is a flat $350 — genuine licensed-attorney work, priced as an outcome fee, not by the hour.
What do you need from us to start?
The disbursement description, amount, and payee; your beneficiary's current SSI/SSDI/Medicaid enrollment status and state; and the trust's governing document or ABLE program enrollment (on file after your first submission — you don't resubmit it every time).
What if SSA or a state Medicaid agency later disagrees with a determination?
No compliance service can guarantee an agency's future finding, and we don't claim to. Every Determination Memo is dated to the specific Rule Matrix version and facts submitted, with a full Audit Trail — the actual evidence of due diligence a fiduciary needs if a distribution is later questioned. If a tracked rule change affects a prior determination, our re-audit-notification process alerts you.
Why not just ask a general AI chatbot?
A generic chatbot has no maintained, version-controlled index of your beneficiary's specific state's Medicaid-supplement rules, and no reliable way to confirm it's applying post-January-2026 ABLE age-expansion-aware guidance rather than stale training data. It also produces no named analyst, no attorney sign-off, and no Audit Trail you can hand to a court or regulator as evidence of due diligence.
What if our state isn't in your Rule Matrix yet?
We expand the Rule Matrix state by state as pilot fiduciaries onboard — each new state's Medicaid-supplement rules are researched and attorney-reviewed before we trust them for a live determination. Tell us your state at intake and we'll confirm coverage before you submit a paid request.
Get your free Disbursement Compliance Check
Tell us how to reach you and the beneficiary's state. We'll follow up with secure instructions to send the Disbursement Request and any supporting documents.
Compliance and scope
BenefitGuard provides disbursement-compliance research services to professional fiduciaries. We are never the trustee, never take custody of trust or ABLE funds, and never make the final disbursement decision — the fiduciary remains trustee and decision-maker of record. Standard determinations are benefits-compliance research delivered to the professional-fiduciary customer of record, not individualized legal advice to a beneficiary or family; novel, high-value, or high-risk determinations, and every Certified Opinion, are reviewed and signed by a licensed elder-law attorney (a Certified Elder Law Attorney where available). Nothing on this site is legal, tax, or investment advice. Full detail is in the compliance-checklist.md document of the BenefitGuard build package, and in the operating blueprint dossier.